'SAMENA Daily' News

Orange Telecom, the French multinational telecommunications giant, debuted a new personal virtual assistant at this week’s Show Hello conference.

Djingo, an artificially-intelligent virtual assistant the likes of Amazon Alexa, or Google Assistant, can be controlled by voice or text and may be integrated into various Orange services including TV and banking. It may be accessed for text-based commands through some Orange apps, and will respond to voice commands through a small home speaker or by a microphone-enabled remote control.

With the new virtual assistant, Orange customers can control Orange TV, manage connected objects, or make a phone call or send a text message. Because it has incorporated continuous learning through artificial intelligence, Djingo was created to provide increasingly relevant answers to user inquiries and requests.

Additionally, Djingo will act as the virtual advisor to customers of the newly announced Orange Bank, a fully-virtual bank to be launched in France this year, followed by Spain and Belgium. Orange Bank will allow customers to manage all financial services through a banking app, with free bank cards and no associated fees. The Orange Bank app will also allow customers to transfer money by SMS. The virtual advisor function will allow Orange Bank clients to access customer service 24/7 and, if required, to be put in touch with a human customer service representative for more complicated issues.

At Show Hello 2017, Orange CEO Stephane Richard demonstrated Djingo receiving voice commands through a small, round speaker. The virtual assistant was able to play music upon request, and to publish a tweet when directed to do so.

In addition to Djingo, Orange announced several technological advancements at Show Hello, including virtualization of the LiveBox router, moving some functions of the device to the cloud so that a user may access those functions remotely. The company also developed the Orange sound bar, in collaboration with Dolby, to provide an immersive sound experience for fiber optic customers.

While the technology is still in development, Djingo represents Orange Telecom’s initial foray into the intelligent virtual assistant market, which is expected to exceed $11 billion USD in global revenues by 2024.

Djingo was developed by Orange in collaboration with Deutsche Telekom, and will be available to Orange customers in 2018.